


One Original Flavour Potato Chip

by Derin



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-09
Updated: 2020-10-03
Packaged: 2021-03-07 00:27:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,152
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26367931
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Derin/pseuds/Derin
Summary: Life is hard for Elias Bouchard. It hasn't been hard for almost 20 years, because with a 200-year-old egomaniac occultist puppetting his body as part of a long-term plan to break the world, Elias hasn't been able to really, well, do anything.But now Jonah's gone, and Elias doesn't know why. He doesn't know if Gertrude's body, dragged into the tunnels below the Institute with his own hands, is going to be found and have him put in jail for a crime he cannot explain. He doesn't know which of Jonah's spooky collection of magical allies and enemies will kill him immediately if they find out he's not Jonah. He doesn't know what the Big Apocalypse Plan is, or how to stop it. He doesn't know who he can trust.Elias has one goal: stay alive. You'd think that spending two decades watching the machinations of somebody who'd survived this kind of nonsense for two centuries would've taught him something, made this easy.It didn't.
Comments: 37
Kudos: 61





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hello everyone I am back on my bullshit

Elias was having a weird day.

Elias had had nothing but weird days since 1996, when his boss had summoned him into his office and gave him a long speech about promise and potential and the good of the Institute and then proceeded to knock him unconscious. He’d woken up unable to move, with his former boss instead moving his limbs and speaking with his mouth and seeing through… well, their own eyes, actually, that part was pretty gross… and that had been about the state of affairs for the next two decades. Elias couldn’t help but think that it was kind of poetic, in a really horrible way – he’d already been coasting through life, and now, well, he could coast forever. He’d never have to – wouldn’t be able to – do anything ever again.

Or so he’d thought. Until this unbelievably weird day, when he woke up, reached for his alarm… and realised that he was reaching for his alarm. Him. Elias. Moving his own hand.

His immediate assumption was that he was dreaming. He did dream about having control again, sometimes. But as he noticed he was moving his own hand, he panicked and banged his wrist on the edge of his bedside cabinet and pain shot up his arm, and he’d never been able to feel pain in dreams.

Okay. Okay. This was a good thing, probably. Having his body back was a good thing.

And this wasn’t weird at all. This was the least weird day he’d had in two decades, because someone was supposed to control their own body. The weirdness in his life had been drastically reduced. This was a good thing.

 _There is no need to panic,_ Elias thought to himself, panicking.

He got up, fell over, took a moment to remember how to walk, and headed for the en suite bathroom of the surprisingly opulent little home provided to the head of the Magnus Institute. He’d been worried that he might be too out of practice to actually walk, but it seemed that he could thank muscle memory for a lot; he seemed basically coordinated, so long as he remembered to keep the legs moving. He let himself walk into the elegant marble sink rather than risk overbalancing by stopping too quickly, and stared at his reflection in the mirror.

Jonah Magnus’ eyes stared back at him, out of a face that he’d long considered Jonah Magnus’ face. He only saw it in the mirror, under the control of another person; it was hard to think of it as his own face in those circumstances. But right now… right now that daunted expression was all his. The hand running down the cheek, then up again, tracing the eyes, was his.

“What the fuck,” he whispered, and was surprised to find that he had no real trouble speaking, either. “Where are you?”

Jonah Magnus didn’t answer. Which told Elias absolutely nothing. The pair didn’t have any kind of telepathic bond; Elias had never been sure if Jonah even knew that he, Elias, was still in there. All this told him was that Jonah, alive or dead, couldn’t puppet Elias’ body right now. Or possibly he was choosing not to, but that had never happened before and it seemed an odd thing for him to start now.

Okay. So. Elias might still be carrying around the consciousness of a two-century-old occultist who he was pretty sure was trying to end the world through some complicated means, and might take back over at any time. Or he might not be.

What to do about this?

If Jonah was still in there, and able to come back, then scooping the eyes out would probably stop him. But Elias didn’t think he’d live very long in that scenario. He’d be blind, and Jonah had scary friends. So, that aside, there wasn’t much he could do about the whole occult possession thing except… wait to see if it would happen again. And maybe try to figure out what had happened, and how to keep his body, before it did happen. Oh yeah, and stay alive.

The staying alive part should probably be his first priority.

So. So. How to stay alive. Don’t panic. God, he wished Jonah had kept up the pot habit. He could’ve used some in the house about now.

What he knew: Jonah was a scary occult mage with scary fear powers. He could, he could see things, and implant thoughts, and oh yeah, control people’s bodies. Elias didn’t know exactly how his powers worked, because he never saw anything Jonah saw that wasn’t just, y’know, with his eyeballs, but he’d seen him showboat and brag and make enough stupid ‘be seeing you’ puns to get the gist.

What else he knew: Jonah had a lot of… acquaintances?… who also had scary fear powers. Allies, probably, or maybe enemies; it seemed to change a lot. Whether they were allies or enemies didn’t make much difference to Elias; he’d probably be a target either way, if they found out he wasn’t Jonah.

Oh yeah, and Jonah had been trying to bring about the apocalypse. Elias was pretty sure about that, although he didn’t understand exactly how. If he’d just evilly monologued to Gertrude a bit longer before shooting her and dragging her into the tunnels, maybe outlined his whole Evil Plan… but no. Almost all the other powers had tried their apocalypses, and failed, and Elias was pretty sure there was a Stranger one coming up, and then Jonah was trying something that had something to do with the new Archivist. Elias had no idea whether the Archivist was in on the plot. Or if any of his assistants were. Jonah sent a lot of long, boring emails and had a lot of long, boring conversations and it wasn’t unheard of for Elias to miss something important. It wasn’t as if he’d ever expected to need this information!

So Elias supposed he should find out if the whole Observing apocalypse would still go ahead without Jonah, and if so, what he could do to stop it. So.

Stay alive. Don’t let anyone know he wasn’t Jonah. Find out why he suddenly wasn’t Jonah, and if there was anything he could do to keep that state of affairs continuing. Stop the apocalypse. Maybe find something to smoke.

Doable. That list of tasks was very doable. There was no need to panic.

Yeah.

So, uh. Time to… get ready for work, Elias supposed.

By the time he was out the door, Elias had a handle on the whole ‘remember to actually walk’ thing. There was a sticky point at the front desk, when Rosie greeted him and several awkward seconds stretched out before he remembered that he was supposed to respond, but other than that he thought he was doing pretty well.

Fortunately, Jonah had been very pro-scheduling, and Elias’ duties and meeting for the week were carefully laid out on his computer in a colour-coded table. He had a good idea of what most of them were about, having watched Jonah talk to all the people mentioned in the schedule several times, but had never bothered to pay attention to the details. He’d be paying for that now, he supposed. Nothing in the week looked to involve any creepy magic people, so that was a good start. Perhaps he’d have time to find his feet before he had to try to bluff his way through any of those kinds of meetings.

Elias looked over the Institute’s finances (his first task for that day), and paused. Elias himself wasn’t particularly wealthy – he supposed that if you were swapping bodies a lot, it became impractical to make each of those identities rich. But the Institute had a reasonable amount of money squirrelled away in bonds and savings, set up in a way that the head could access it quite easily and with minimal notice. He could probably pour a large amount of the Institute’s money into his bank account and disappear to a country with nice beaches long before anyone noticed.

It was tempting. But if he did that, would any of the spooky magic people come after him? Was Jonah currently involved in any of their plans? Would disappearing have them after him for revenge? Ugh, why hadn’t he paid more attention to this kind of thing?!

And there was the apocalypse. Elias had never been proactive, he wasn’t the hero type, but he’d like a nice long life on a beach that wasn’t going to be cut short by the end of the world, if possible. The Archivist could probably handle the clowns – Gertrude had managed several apocalypses, so surely Jon could handle one – but without knowing what Jonah’s plans for Jon had been, and if they might still go ahead without his help, and if Jon was in on the whole thing… hell, Elias taking control again might be part of Jonah’s plan! Maybe he expected him to do the obvious, sensible thing, the thing Elias very much wanted to do, and take the money and get as far away as possible.

No. Elias couldn’t afford to coast any more, at least not yet. He needed to figure out what was going on. He needed to see what was happening for himself.

There was a break in his schedule in half an hour. He was going to have to visit the archives.


	2. Chapter 2

So. What did Elias know about the archives?

Not as much as he would have, if he’d known it was ever going to be important. He knew that Jonah had had some kind of epiphany about how to make an apocalypse right before promoting the most recent Archivist, Jonathan sims, and that Jon was important to the apocalypse somehow. Jonah had been too inconsiderate to monologue his plan before a mirror or anything, so Elias wasn’t certain what it actually was. Or if Jon was in on it. If he wasn’t, at least one of his three assistants probably was – Jonah would’ve made sure somebody down there was keeping things on track, certainly.

Elias had to find out who Jonah’s allies were.

He tried to imitate Jonah’s confident step as he strolled down to the archives. The front area, where the assistants worked, contained only Sasha, typing up something on her computer. She shot him a smile as he entered, but it wasn’t a particularly happy one. That probably wasn’t suspicious. It’d be more suspicious to fond someone who _was_ happy to see him.

“Elias! Are you looking for Jon?”

Elias remembered to actually respond this time. He was getting the hang of this! “Ah, yes.” Probably should’ve actually had a plan beyond ‘go down there and poke about’. Too late now.

“He’s recording now. I think he’s almost done?”

Elias nodded and took a seat. The shelves of horror stories around him felt oppressive, cramped and poorly balanced and covered in dust; he wasn’t sure if it was nervousness or the dust or the knowledge of the horrors those files contained that left his chest tight. “How are you settling into the archives?” he asked Sasha.

“Oh, you know. Getting there.”

Vague answer. Some kind of code? Was she Jonah’s accomplice, trying to communicate something secret to him?

“Hmm. After the… mess, with Gertrude, I’m sure Jon will be much more… suitable, don’t you think?”

The tiniest flinch. Recognition! They were talking in code! Sasha was –

“Mmm. Lots to organise, either way,” Sasha said neutrally, and Elias remembered that she’d applied for the head archivist position, and Jonah had chosen Jon. Ugh, she wasn’t talking in code with him; she just thought he was being an arsehole. ‘Jon will be much more suitable’; Jesus. What was _wrong_ with him today?

In fairness, he was out of practice at this whole socialising thing. He was also pretty sure that Sasha wasn’t an accomplice of Jonah’s. If she was in on The Plot, she wouldn’t have reacted like that, and he fact she’d been turned down for Jon’s position made it unlikely anyway. If they were working together, Jonah would’ve chosen her, or she wouldn’t have applied in the first place.

Sasha was looking increasingly uncomfortable, and Elias realised that he was openly staring at her. Right, he was in charge of the eyes now! He pointed them somewhere else.

Just then, Jon came out of his office, and froze. “Elias! What,uh, brings you down here?”

“Just wanted to see how you’re settling in, Jon.”

“Oh. Um. Fine.” Jon shuffled awkwardly. “We solved the audio problem. The tape recorders work, so…”

“Excellent. I’m glad things are on track. So you’re settling in well in your new role?”

“Y-yes, things are… things are fine.” Jon definitely looked nervous. Was that suspicious? Was this ‘the boss dropped in unexpectedly’ nervousness, or ‘my co-conspirator in a Fear Apocalypse Plan is here and I hope nothing’s wrong’ nervousness? Elias wished he could look in his head and check.

“You will let me know if you have any problems, yes?” Elias tried a smile, and mustn’t have gotten it right, because Jon took a step back. “I’m here to help.” _Come on. Say you want to meet privately. Tell me some random apocalypse detail is off. Give me something_.

“Yes, of course. I, I think we’re fine. Just a lot of organising to do. Gertrude’s system…” he gestured vaguely at the chaos of shelves and boxes.

“Of course. I’ll leave you to it, then. Where are Tim and Martin?”

“Tim’s out doing follow-up,” Jon said. “Martin is… probably around.”

“Right.” Elias left before he could say something stupid and make things weird.

So. What had he learned?

Not a lot.

Sasha was probably fine. Jon was… maybe fine? He needed more information. If he was really, really lucky, maybe everyone would be fine; maybe Jonah had been working alone and the apocalypse couldn’t continue without him and if Elias just kept his head down for awhile all the other spooky people would forget about him and he could steal all that Institute money and run off to a private island. Maybe they could just stop the circus and everyone would be in the clear and everything would be great forever.

Yeah, that was likely.

He found Martin in the break room. Elias stood in the doorway for awhile, watching the man make tea. Martin was highly suspicious. When Jon had been promoted, he’d requested Tim and sasha as assistants, but Martin… Jonah had called Martin into his office, had a long and vague conversation with him that Elias couldn’t really follow, and transferred him down to the archives immediately without explanation. If anyone was Jonah’s man inside the archives, Martin was the number one suspect.

Martin turned, saw him, and nearly dropped his mug. “Elias! Hi!”

“Hello, Martin.” Elias looked the man up and down. He looked bothered by something, although Elias didn’t know what, and wasn’t meeting Elias’ eyes.

“Can I, um. Is something wrong?”

Oh, he was staring again! Elias tried to soften his gaze. “I just wanted to see how you were fitting in in the archives, Martin.”

“Oh. It’s, it’s fine. Everything’s fine. We, um, we’re doing some organising, so…” he trailed off.

Was that a code? Was Elias supposed to be able to glean something from ‘some organising’? They were alone; maybe he could push martin to say something more concrete.

“And everything’s on schedule?” Elias tried.

“What?”

“Your… projects. No problems? Everything’s in hand?”

“Um. Yeah. Everything’s going well.” Martin swallowed nervously.

Did _that_ mean anything?

“The others probably have more details than me,” Martin continued with a shrug.

There were others! That was something! There was no non-suspicious way to ask what he meant, who these ‘others’ were… he needed to keep things focused on something that wouldn’t immediately give away his own suspicious ignorance of the situation. “Perhaps. I want to know what you think, though. Any complications? With any details?”

“Well, I don’t know about _complications_ , but…” Martin started to go through the difficulties of finding details related to a report of what Elias immediately recognised as a Stranger manifestation. Okay; he could decode this. Martin was requesting help in preparing for the Unknowing. Elias listened patiently, trying to untangle exactly what he was asking for in the torrent of details about filing systems and the difference between the library and the archive’s documentation practices, but eventually gave up and had to cut in, “What can I do to help, Martin?”

“Oh. Well, um… artefact storage is stonewalling us, and we need to check their records for – ”

“They won’t get in your way any more. Anything else?”

“Oh.” Martin blinked. “I didn’t expect… um. No, that’s it, I think? I mean, also colour-coded folders, but I ave order forms for that already. Jon insists coloured folders look unprofessional, but if it’s about access…” he continued to talk about Jon for several minutes. Elias tried to pay attention – if Martin’s job was handling Jon for Jonah (and if very obviously was; there was no other reason Martin would know this much random minutae about Jon), then anything he thought he was telling Jonah about him could be important – but it just sounded like random gossip. He remembered as much as he could in case it was important, until Martin seemed to realise he was rambling, and abruptly stopped talking, a blush creeping up his face. “Anyway,” he finished awkwardly, “he’s not happy with how Gertrude left stuff, but we’re working on it, so…”

“Yes, well, Gertrude did have certain… ways,” Elias tried carefully. “But I’m sure this team won’t disappoint. Best of luck, Martin. I’ll talk to artefact storage right away.”

Elias left Martin in the break room, cradling his tea. He still had to talk to Tim, but he was pretty sure he had a solid idea of what was going on. Sasha was in the clear, and Jon probably was, too; it looked like Jon was a patsy, given a couple of cannon fodder assistants and Martin as a handler, to guide him through whatever he needed to do to bring about Jonah’s apocalypse. Martin was clearly focused on Jon, and focused on the Unknowing; hopefully he’d prove extremely good at stopping the latter without succeeding in his plans with the former. He’d also mentioned ‘the others’, who had a clearer idea of their plans, meaning that not only were there more mysterious conspirators that Elias would have to find, but they would probably be harder to fool than Martin.

This was going to get complicated.

Okay. Okay. No need to panic. He just needed a plan.

Step 1: talk to artefact storage and give the archives free reign over whatever they needed.

Step 2: stop the clowns from ending the world.

Step 3: stop Martin Blackwood from ending the world.

Easy.


End file.
